Awesome, psyched to have you here Kahlil! Welcome to the monkey house... :) And thanks for holding down the Mid-Coast -- I know this bunch is "complicated" geographically (which is great!) including Anna Washenko who once reprazented Chicago but now hails from LA by way of NY; whereas i who now join her in LA-LA-Land as of 3 days ago come by way of Oakland via LA (the 1st time...) via upstate NY, where Erik Sagen currently calls home... Emily is entrusted with keeping SF on its toes in my absence, and Mr. Gray operates the Recurrency Appalachia branch office!

Then there's all the geography i don't know about yet -- and the curious discussion with Emily recently about how the internet seems to have exacerbated our collective Explorer Mentality to the point where i kind of feel at home everywhere and yet nowhere; I'm grateful for the chance to travel frequently and keep up with far-flung friends, but it also somehow feels harder to grasp onto a sense of local place and community. There's an "east vs. west" thing here in LA as there was in the Bay area I just left -- where the jokingly almost true sense is that some people would think nothing of popping over to Manhattan from SF to see friends for the weekend, but would literally cringe in disgust at the thought of taking a BART ride over to the East Bay 20 minutes away (same thing with the subset of Santa monica / Venice residents who "refuse to go east of the 405"). The placelessness of the web carries the allure of togetherness in a way that paradoxically seems to undercut actual togetherness with the often mundane business of building communities and living together fairly and peaceably...

Anywho -- that was a TL;DR philosophically meandering way of welcoming you to the krew, Kahlil! ;) Look forward to working with you -- let us know if there's anything we can do to help :)

..some people would think nothing of popping over to Manhattan from SF to see friends for the weekend, but would literally cringe in disgust at the thought of taking a BART ride over to the East Bay 20 minutes away..The placelessness of the web carries the allure of togetherness in a way that paradoxically seems to undercut actual togetherness with the often mundane business of building communities and living together fairly and peaceably...

Look forward to working with you -- let us know if there's anything we can do to help :)

Thanks. From what I've observed, Miss Emilyis more than capable of thrashing SuckaF(r)ee! :)

I hear you..when I lived in the Bay, in the late '90's, I was pretty disgusted by SF's prejudice against The Town.

and the curious discussion with Emily recently about how the internet seems to have exacerbated our collective Explorer Mentality..The placelessness of the web carries the allure of togetherness in a way that paradoxically seems to undercut actual togetherness with the often mundane business of building communities and living together fairly and peaceably...

Most physical community is built, in togetherness, by people whom may or may not fancy each other; whereas cyber-community is highly selective, thus heightening our fractured digital divide. Amongst most of us, ambition overrides morality.

Most physical community is built, in togetherness, by people whom may or may not fancy each other; whereas cyber-community is highly selective, thus heightening our fractured digital divide. Amongst most of us, ambition overrides morality.

That is well put on both counts. The selectivity of online life has had challenging implications for media as well -- when your business model relies on amassing as many eyeballs as possible, and those eyeballs have more choices than ever about where to look (or look away from), there's even more pressure to polarize / sensationalize. At the same time there's even more risk and less potential reward for "speaking truth to power," and the journalist's historical role in keeping the public informed gets more difficult when it's insanely easy to filter out anything you don't want to hear (i.e. the sometimes difficult and challenging truth vs. appearance / perception of what's going on).

The ambition vs. morality dimension is something I think about all the time. We have a hard time conceptualizing beyond binary value judgments ("ambition is good!") when the truth is both far more complex and not nearly as objective as we like to imagine -- I've seen people torn apart by their own ambition; drive others around them into exhaustion (or away); or reach that point of potential corruption where the allure of end justifying the means can be almost irresistible. When you add peer pressure and cultural pressure to Succeed At All Costs to the mix, it's a recipe for abandoning morals in the name of "achievement," writ large. The more you achieve and the greater your ambition, the more likely it becomes that you'll run up against that moment when one must choose between doing the right thing and doing the successful thing that sacrifices something valuable and, perhaps, irrecoverable.

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